1972 Oscar Watch

1972.  The Godfather was released, pretty much end of story, right?  Wait, what's all this Cabaret bullshit?  Cabaret gets 8 Oscar wins which sets the record for most wins without winning Best Picture.  I can't even see nominating it for 8 awards.  I like the cinematography and I'll grant you maybe a sound nomination, costume design but other than that I just don't get it.  The Godfather only wins 3 Oscars which seems ludicrous when you look back on it.
You can see my GABBY winners and nominees HERE

BEST PICTURE

 

5. The Emigrants - This is a Swedish movie about a group of immigrants coming to America.  If you've read some of my other Oscar Watch blogs you should know that foreign films always end up in the number 5 spot.  It's not that I don't like them, it's just that I would rather honor a good American movie rather than a foreign film.  This is a weird nomination though because this movie was eligible for Best Foreign Film last year and lost and then got 4 Oscar nominations the next year.  If the movie was so good, why didn't you give it a win last year?

4. Cabaret - I just don't get the praise for this movie.  It's a musical but it's not fun and the songs don't have anything to do with the plot.  I mean, they do but they're not weaved in to the story well at all.  A scene will play out and then we go to a nightclub where a guy in makeup sings a song.  I've seen it 3 times now and continue to not like it.  I saw it once when I started to get into film, then I saw a local production of the show, watched the movie again, saw another local production, then the movie again.  I don't like the stage play, I don't like the songs, I don't like the story.  If this is your bag, that's fine, I just don't get it.

3. Sounder - What a terrific nomination.  The movie is good, not great but look at some of the other movies of this year starring or featuring a predominately black cast, Across 110th Street, The Big Bird Cage, Black Girl, Blacula, Cool Breeze, The Hammer, The Man, Shaft's Big Score, Slaughter, Super Fly, Trouble Man... some of the movies are actually pretty good but they all cast black actors as either gangsters, pimps, villains or super heroes just meant to scare whitey and earn a dollar for rich white producers trying to score money from black audiences.  This is just a simple story about black life in America.  A family of sharecroppers deals with life when the patriarch of the family is sent to jail for stealing a ham.  It's a small film but is very important in film history.

2. Deliverance - Man, this is an intense film.  Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty are 4 city boys who decide to go rafting down a river in backwoods Georgia.  What follows is male bonding, adventure, murder, rape, disposing of a body and when the movie is over you're left with the sense that their real troubles are just beginning because now they have the memories of all this shit.  It's a real rough movie to watch but well worth it.

1. The Godfather - You never saw The Godfather?  I'm not someone who praises The Godfather as the best movie of all time but it is one of those essential movies.  What I mean by that is, if we lost every movie ever made in a fire we could teach the next generation how to make movies by showing them The Godfather.  It's just such a well made film, it's a little long but it's not bloated in any way.  Almost every scene is important to the story and there is no filler.  Anything you could call filler is still entertaining.  It's a movie that can be studied in film classes, it's a thoughtful family drama, it's a cool gangster film but it's also just really entertaining.

So both Cabaret and The Godfather received 10 nominations a piece.  The Godfather only won 3 Oscars, 1 being Best Picture and Cabaret won 8, including Best Director.  Cabaret was actually the favorite to win come Oscar night.  Can you imagine how bad we would think Cabaret was if it beat out The Godfather?  It's like how How Green Was My Valley is not looked at as a pretty good John Ford movie, it's the movie that beat Citizen Kane.  The Godfather obviously deserved to win and Cabaret continues to be over rated.

Oscar Winner: The Godfather

My Vote: The Godfather

GABBY Winner: The Godfather

BEST ACTOR

 

5. Peter O'Toole - The Ruling Class - This is a movie I discovered recently and had high hopes for.  O'Toole plays the heir to a royal family and after the current Earl dies from autoerotic asphyxiation they give the castle to O'Toole but he's a schizophrenic who thinks he's Jesus Christ.  O'Toole is, as always, really fun in the role but the movie is fairly boring even with a wacky premise.  O'Toole's a hoot but everything around him is just dull and lifeless and to make it worse, this movie is only 15 minutes shorter than The Godfather.  It's so long and plodding.  O'Toole's great but I don't want this movie to be an Oscar winning film.

4. Paul Winfield - Sounder - Winfield is a father and husband during the great depression.  He goes to jail for stealing a ham.  His son visits him in jail and he has a touching moment when he is freed.  It's a solid performance, but there's not much of it.  He's kind of a supporting character but I like that he's here.

3. Laurence Olivier - Sleuth - Sleuth is a wild wacky ride of a suspense mystery.  It starts with Caine coming to see Olivier because Caine is sleeping with his wife.  Olivier is actually cool with Caine cuckolding him.  He's tired of his wife and wants her off his hands. but he wants to make sure she's taken care of so he orchestrates a scheme.  Caine will steal some jewelry from Olivier and Olivier will file a phony insurance claim and that way everybody wins.  Like with all schemes in movies, things aren't as easy as the look and a whole lot of intrigue follows.  The entire movie is just Caine and Olivier in a house but it doesn't feel like a stage play on film, the movie flows at a nice pace and most of the credit for that goes to the director Joseph L. Mankiewicz but also the performances.

2. Michael Caine - Sleuth - Caine plays the young adulterer who comes to Olivier's home and tells him that he's going to run off his wife.  He matches Olivier every step of the way.  The movie is just the two of them together so it's hard to pick who is better.  I give the edge to Caine just because he seems more natural.  I see Olivier acting a little bit, Caine just seems like he's existing in the movie.

1. Marlon Brando - The Godfather - You never saw The Godfather?

Marlon Brando winning here not only gave a great actor a 2nd Oscar but it provided us with one of the best Oscar moments of all time, when Brando sent up some actress pretending to be a Native American activist to accept his award.  Brando was a strange strange dude.  Of course, I'm voting for Brando.  He's just iconic as Don Vito Corleone, a performance that has stood the test of time.  There's nobody else to vote for.  Caine and Olivier were great but it's hard to choose between them, O'Toole deserved an Oscar but this is probably my least favorite of his nominations, this and Goodbye Mr. Chips, and Paul Winfield is really a supporting character in his movie.  It's Brando by a mile.

Oscar Winner: Marlon Brando

My Vote: Marlon Brando

GABBY Winner: Marlon Brando

BEST ACTRESS

 

5. Liv Ullmann - The Emigrants - Foreign performance, you're in the 5th slot.

4. Liza Minnelli - Cabaret - Once again, I don't get this movie.  Liza Minnelli sounds great and looks great in the film but I don't see a performance worthy of a Best Actress Oscar here.

3. Maggie Smith - Travels With My Aunt - I love Maggie Smith.  I really like that she has been acting forever and then when you go back into her filmography you find weird stuff like this that you never heard of.  I grew up knowing her as the head mother in Sister Act but then found out that she was really a great comic actress.  Here she plays an eccentric woman that takes her nephew on a bizarre road trip that starts with a severed finger.  It's a fun and bizarre little film.  Smith just won an Oscar and will win a 2nd by the end of the decade so there is no need to honor this performance but she's a nice comedic nomination.

2. Cicely Tyson - Sounder - Just like with her co-star Paul Winfield, it's generous to call her the lead of the movie.  The film focuses more on the oldest son than either of the parents, but I like that she got the nomination.  Tyson doesn't do a whole heck of a lot in the movie other than look sad and beaten down by the world but she's really good at it.  You feel immensley for her character just because of how sad her eyes are.  It's a really nice performance.

1. Diana Ross - Lady Sings The Blues - Ross plays Billie Holliday in a warts and all biopic.  I usually don't like biopics, I know where the story is going and they all seem to follow the same narrative structure so they are very repetitive.  Ross is really great in this movie though, the movie isn't anything special but Ross elevates it with her performance.  Was she a good actress or just a natural at playing a person similar to herself?  It could just be a case of perfect casting, but either way she's my vote.

So this is a historic Oscar milestone.  For the first time 2 black actresses were nominated in this category, and they gave the win to Liza Minnelli.  I'm picking Diana Ross even though she's not known primarily as an actress.  If I was voting for who deserves an Oscar more I would vote for Cicely Tyson but Ross gave the best performance this year.

Oscar Winner: Liza Minnelli

My Vote: Diana Ross

GABBY Winner: Diana Ross

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

 

5. Joel Grey - Cabaret - One more time, I don't get this movie.  The main reason I don't like it is because of Joel Grey.  Not because of his performance, which is good, but because of his character.  He's a mysterious emcee who sings songs randomly throughout the movie.  I don't understand who he is or why he is in the movie.  If I'm missing something here, please let me know.

4. Robert Duvall - The Godfather - Duvall plays Tom Hagen the Corleone's family adopted son and consigliere.  He's great in the film but in a low-key kind of way.  He mostly just sits in the background of scenes and has a few moments but when he's up against James Caan and Al Pacino it's hard to vote for him.  Not that he's not terrific in the film, he's just the character with the least amount of impact.

3. Eddie Albert - The Heartbreak Kid - Eddie Albert was a fantastic actor.  I grew up watching him on Green Acres and saw him numerous times in The Longest Yard, one of my favorite movies as a kid.  I was always fascinated by how a guy could play two completely different roles.  In Green Acres he's comically befuddled and in The Longest Yard he's menacing and cold.  It was probably one of the first times I remember thinking a guy was a great actor.  In The Heartbreak Kid he is the movie's secret weapon.  Charles Grodin meets the woman of his dreams while he's on his honeymoon and nobody really sees anything wrong with this.  The movie treats it as this is a normal thing to do, follow your heart even if that involves breaking someone else's.  Albert is the voice of reason.  He plays the other woman's father and he doesn't want this guy anywhere near his daughter and is not afraid to voice his opinion.  He gets most of the funniest lines in the film and plays it completely straight faced.  Fun fact, his son made his breakout in film this year with Butterflies Are Free.

2. Al Pacino - The Godfather - Michael Corleone is kind of the lead of The Godfather, he probably has more screen time that Marlon Brando and the movie is really his story.  Brando is The Godfather but Pacino becomes The Godfather.  It makes sense to put him here because he wasn't an established star like Brando and if you're going to put one and only one actor in the lead category it should be Brando.  Pacino is great here, he's quiet and reserved and the exact opposite of the roles he would play in his later career.  It's a tragic character, he's the one son who wasn't supposed to be involved in the business and he's the only one who can take control.

1. James Caan - The Godfather - Sonny Corleone is the oldest son of the clan.  He's the most explosive and volatile.  When he finds out that his sister's husband is beating her up he explodes in a fit of rage and beats the crap out of him.  His short fuse eventually causes his downfall.  He has some of the best lines in the movie.  It's hard to vote against Pacino but I keep going back to Sonny as my favorite character.  And since he doesn't make it out to see the sequel that tilts the scales slightly in his favor.

I feel like I should vote for Pacino, but he's really kind of a lead role and James Caan is the best "supporting" character in the film.  Also, looking at this historically, Pacino will get his Oscar in 1992.  I'm probably not going to vote for him that year but I'll probably vote for Pacino for The Godfather Part II so I'm voting for Jimmy Caan here and will deal with Al sometime in the future.

Oscar Winner: Joel Grey

My Vote: James Caan

GABBY Winner: James Caan

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

 

5. Geraldine Page - Pete 'N' Tillie - This is a really good film that Geraldine Page is barely in.  The movie is about Walter Matthau and Carol Burnett and their courtship and marriage and relationship.  Both of these actors are well worth spending an hour and a half with so I liked the film a lot.  Page is just kind of there.  She's Carol Burnett's friend who shows up at the beginning and the end.  She doesn't have much of anything to do in the film.  This is almost exactly like Page's nominated performance in The Pope Of Greenwich Village, she's in like one scene and she got an Oscar nomination.  I watched the movie specifically for Page, then forgot that was the reason I was watching it, just enjoying the film, then had to remember what the hell Geraldine Page did to deserve a nod.  Glad the film got recognized but not sure why here.

4. Shelley Winters - The Poseidon Adventure - I love this nomination even though it has no business being here.  The Poseidon Adventure was one of my favorite films as a kid.  Here's the plot, a bunch of Oscar winners are on a boat and the boat flips over and they all have to make their way to the bottom, which is now the top.  It's so much fun and most of the excitement comes from waiting to see which one of your favorite Hollywood stars will die next.  Will Ernest Borgnine make it to the end?  What will happen to Roddy MacDowell?  Shelley Winters plays the stock character of the old Jewish mother, she's overweight and fusses over her husband and complains a lot.  When the time comes to save the day though, she has a skill that nobody else has and she has a really great heroic moment.  No way it should win, probably didn't deserve a nomination, but I love that it's here.

3. Eileen Heckart - Butterflies Are Free - This movie is about a young blind man who wants to live life on his own.  He gets an apartment and starts a romantic relationship with the woman who lives next door.  Heckart plays his possessive and domineering mother.  She comes in half way through the movie and begs him to move back in with her because she doesn't think he is able to live on his own.  The movie is incredibly stage-y, it mostly takes place in one room and there are lots of long takes.  It's like you're watching a filmed play.  The movie is saved by the performances though.  Edward Albert plays the blind man, Goldie Hawn plays the neighbor and Heckart is really good as the mother.  She's appropriately nurturing and loving while also being a bit cold and distant.  She's an obstacle without being a villain.

2. Susan Tyrrell - Fat City - This is a John Huston directed film about a washed up boxer making a comeback.  The boxer is played by Stacy Keach and he likes to hang out at a bar where there's an old drunk played by Susan Tyrell.  The movie is not that great.  It's one of those 70s films where nothing really happens.  It's all about the acting and the mood rather than telling a compelling story.  Anyway, She's really natural playing such a character.  I believed that John Huston went into a bar somewhere and dragged her out from under the bathroom stall and put her in front of a camera.  It's not a performance that I can really vote for since I don't like the movie but it's good enough to get nominated and land in the number 2 spot.

1. Jeannie Berlin - The Heartbreak Kid - This is a messed up movie when you think about it.  It's a comedy about adultery.  Charles Grodin impulsively gets married to a woman, not like a shotgun wedding type thing, he's just young and wants to have sex.  On his honeymoon he finds out that she annoys the shit out of him, then he meets Cybill Shepherd who he instantly falls in love with.  So he's cheating on his wife on his honeymoon, all the while he keeps making up outlandish stories of why he's cancelling dinner reservations with his wife.  Jeannie Berlin plays the wife and it's a wonderful performance because she's just annoying enough that you can see why he would want to leave her but she's also sweet enough that you can call this guy an idiot and an asshole.  To compare, the remake went all in on the annoying angle and turned the character into a cartoon monster.  Berlin makes you feel sympathy for her character even if you want to strangle her.

When it comes time to vote, Winters is out because she's already won twice, Page is out because I don't know why she got nominated in the first place, which leaves Heckart, Berlin and Tyrell.  In situations like these I usually look to who deserves an Oscar more.  I suppose that answer is Heckart, she's the only one with a previous nomination and she also has an Emmy, Golden Globe and a Tony, but she's not exactly a household name.  I'll instead go for the performance that I found the most delightful and that's Jeannie Berlin.  I absolutely loved her in the movie.

Oscar Winner: Eileen Heckart

My Vote: Jeannie Berlin

GABBY Winner: Jeannie Berlin

Best Director

Francis Ford Coppola obviously should have won this one.  Then my choices would be John Boorman for Deliverance, then Joseph L. Mankiewicz for Sleuth, then Bob Fosse for Cabaret.  So he's my 4th choice but at least he's more deserving than Jan Troell for The Emigrants.

Best Original Screenplay/Adapted Screenplay

The Candidate wins in the original category against some weak competition.  The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie would have been a fun winner but The Candidate is a funny and insightful script.  I'm a little surprised that The Godfather won in the adapted category with all the Cabaret love going around.  It's definitely the most deserving script but I wouldn't be surprised one bit if Cabaret won instead.

Best Foreign Language Film

Because of the weird eligibility rules for foreign films, The Emigrants was nominated in this category last year but ineligible this year, but got nominated in 4 other categories.  The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie wins this year and is nominated in other categories as well.  The sequel to The Emigrants, The New Land was nominated as well.

Best Original Score (Dramatic)/Score (Adaptation And Original Song)/Original Song

Speaking of messed up release dates and eligibility rules.  Limelight a Charlie Chaplin film made in 1952 finally got a theatrical release in Los Angeles this year which made it eligible so Chaplin wins his only competitive Oscar for a movie he did 20 years ago.  They also gave him an honorary award this year so he wouldn't go away empty handed, probably just to get him to show up.  The Godfather's iconic score was nominated but then deemed ineligible because a certain amount was written for another film that nobody's ever heard of.  Cabaret wins in the category designed to give a musical an Oscar, beating out Lady Sings The Blues and Man Of La Mancha.  As for Best Song that goes to The Morning After from The Poseidon Adventure.  A tad ironic as this is an easy listening ballad in the middle of a big budget disaster flick.  I guess the same complaint could be made about Michael Jackson's Ben theme from the horror movie about rats.

Best Costume Design

Travels With My Aunt wins which is a fine choice, Dame Maggie Smith's frocks were pleasing to the eye.  I'm surprised that there was no Cabaret love in this category, if nominated I could almost assure a victory.

Best Sound/Art Direction/Cinematography/Editing

Cabaret wins all 4 categories.  I'll grant you art direction, but did Cabaret have better sound mixing than The Poseidon Adventure?  Was the editing better than The Godfather, Deliverance or even The Hot Rock?  Was the cinematography better than The Godfath...wait, The Godfather wasn't nominated for cinematography?  Butterflies Are Free was nominated for Best Cinematography?  The movie that takes place almost entirely in one room?  The Oscar be crazy sometimes.

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